Co-Founder/CEO Rujul Zaparde

Auren Hoffman (00:00.886) Hello, David. There it's my guest today is Rujul Zaparde. Rujul is the co-founder and CEO of Zip, a leading intake to pay procurement platform used by companies like Snowflake, Coinbase and Canva. He previously co-founded Flightcar, which raised over $40 million and was acquired by Mercedes-Benz before starting Zip. Rujul was also a product manager at Airbnb and a visiting partner at Y Combinator. Welcome to World of DaaS.

Rujul (00:01.703) Thank

Rujul (00:26.843) Thank you, thanks so much, Auren, for having me.

Auren Hoffman (00:29.336) Now what is like, procurement is kind of like this weird thing. Like what is it? like, like, like a startup doesn't have procurement per se. Like, do you need to have like 2000 people before you have procurement?

Rujul (00:43.719) Well, so I would say every organization in the world does procurement, whether it may or may not have a formal procurement function.

Auren Hoffman (00:48.14) Right. Just like put on your credit. mean, obviously like every family does procurement, right? We all buy stuff. Yeah.

Rujul (00:54.875) Well, my wife is always telling me how we should have a zip for home so she can approve my Amazon purchases before I make them. But yeah, exactly. Right. If you think about any business in the world, like and how a company operates, right. This typically the second largest area of spend after payroll is this. It's procurement. It's how any employee at that organization actually buys the things that they need, whether it's the software, hiring contractors or buying a billboard on the highway.

in order to do their jobs better and to help the company drive growth, drive savings, bottom line, et cetera.

Auren Hoffman (01:29.944) But at some point there is a department called procurement that shows up somewhere. Like where we're in a company's life cycle, do we start to see that department show up?

Rujul (01:40.263) Oh yeah, we typically see that in the high hundreds of employees. So at least 500, 600, 700 employees. Once the company gets to that size, then they'll start to staff a procurement function. It's also interesting to see if you go to the all the way the other side, like some of the largest companies in the world, they'll have two or 3000 people working in procurement. These can be very, very large functions in the larger.

Auren Hoffman (02:04.426) And, and where did, like, does it like often report into the CFO does report into like, I don't know, the, the head of product. I assume procurement could also be like buying raw materials to go into your battery or something. Right. It could be a lot of different. could be like very strategic or it could be less strategic.

Rujul (02:23.633) No, that's great point. And that'll typically fall under supply chain, which may be part of procurement or might be sort of forked. There's really two types of procurement. There's indirect procurement and there's direct procurement. Direct procurement is kind of like supply chain. It's buying all the things that you need to make the product that you literally sell to customers. And then indirect is all the software you buy and all the IT equipment and all that so that you can kind of operate.

Auren Hoffman (02:31.039) okay.

Auren Hoffman (02:49.186) Got it. So when like Apple is buying like chips and glass for their phones, that's more supply chain. But when they're buying, you know, airplane tickets and chairs and other types of things, that's procurement.

Rujul (03:03.249) That's exactly right. That's indirect spend, is sort of what I mean, what we mean by procurement. Exactly. And you're right. Procurement typically reports into the CFO is what we find. Sometimes it will be the CIO because it's so, procurement sits in between so many teams that have so many different systems that it becomes like a systems thing, not just a driving savings and tracking spend thing, which I can get into, but that's why sometimes it sits with the CIO.

Probably 80 % of the time, CFL.

Auren Hoffman (03:35.384) When I talk to people who work at companies that have procurement, so these are large companies, I would say by and large, all those people hate procurement. They hate the idea of it. They hate the, the department of it. They think it slows them down and makes them like stop what they're doing. What do, what are the companies you do procurement? Well, do well. And why do so many people hate it?

Rujul (03:58.331) Yeah, I totally hear them too, right? And I think it's like, it's such a challenge because procurement is one, just such an under appreciated, a really unappreciated function in general. But I think it's also because the procurement organization is typically not set up for success because they're using these antiquated systems potentially. It's really hard to actually engage.

with the process the right way. And so when end users write like a, you know, I used to be a product manager at Airbnb when I have to go through procurement, it was super confusing for me to be like, oh my God, where do I go? What do I need to key in? And it's like, oh, what is a commodity code? I have no idea what that means. Cause I'm just a product manager. And so then, you know, the function starts to get a bad rep, but it's not, it's not the fault of that function. It's just like,

Auren Hoffman (04:45.027) Yeah.

Rujul (04:51.473) a func, just a byproduct of the software that they have and the fact that they sit in between all these teams and they're almost playing traffic cop, right? Cause you've got to get legal to approve the contract. You've got to get risk involved. You've got to get budget. And so they're just sitting there. And so it may not be sitting with procurement, but it's sitting with somebody else.

Auren Hoffman (05:07.47) Well, what is like, what's the goal? Like, why does, why do you even have that function? Um, obviously you want to spend money. Well, you want to like reduce the risks in companies you have, you know, there's certain things you need legal look over. have a, you know, I assume when you bought something as a product manager, you weren't trying to overspend. Like you're trying to use the company's money relatively well. Like why, why even have that?

Rujul (05:30.087) Well, that's a great question. There's two reasons to, I think you touched on both of them. One is savings and the other one is risk. From a savings perspective, right? We find like most employees, like when I worked at Airbnb, I didn't know what suppliers Airbnb already had. For example, if I'm trying to buy something from, you know, EY, maybe Airbnb already did business with, you know, Deloitte and there's a negotiated rate, right? But I don't know that. so it's, procurement can help guide me. They can help negotiate because they're professional negotiators. can draw.

Auren Hoffman (05:51.522) Right.

Auren Hoffman (05:59.106) And they could see just company wide what you're doing. And okay, if you want to get another seat of LinkedIn or something, they're like, well, we already have this many seats or something.

Rujul (06:08.655) Exactly, I can get you hooked up with IT. Exactly. And then the second component, though, is critically risk. The stat that I always share is 90 % of data breaches come from suppliers. Like if you remember that large target breach a couple of years ago, that was an HVAC supplier of Target that leaked all this credit card data. And then you think, well, when did that company decide to do business with that supplier? And the answer is it was in the procurement process.

And so if the right checks and balances aren't being met and the right reviews are not happening and then there's a breach, well, you have to blame the process then. And so procurement is actually protecting the organization, making sure that the right checks and balances are followed, which of course adds process and can delay things.

Auren Hoffman (06:59.34) I've dealt with dozens of procurement people in my life and I have never once dealt with one that I thought was even remotely competent. Like, just don't think it like those people, even at a big company like Airbnb and Google, like are attracting the most talented people to go into that particular department. Am I completely off base? Would you disagree?

Rujul (07:24.911) disagree, I think because I would say that it's just a very hard job to do, you know, if you really think about the skill sets that are required, because for example, you have to be really good at driving savings, at negotiating, right, like which is a very specific type of probably more soft skill. But the way that the function is built today, you also have to be really good with systems and, you know, and processing records across different systems, managing workflow, like you have to have be able to drive really good operational rigor.

And at least the people I've worked with, those are different, someone who's really great at driving process may not be the best person to negotiate. And the inverse, I think, is often true. And so you just have so many different skill sets and flavors of skills that are required that it's hard for someone to be really good at all of those things.

Auren Hoffman (08:15.192) Just to push back, like if I go to Airbnb right now and just throw a dart at the engineering team, at the product team, at the sales team, like I'm almost, I'm likely to get a pretty talented person, literally just by throwing darts there. like I might bet my guess is most of the product managers are pretty good. There's some bad ones, but like most of are pretty good. Most of the engineers are pretty good at Airbnb. just like, you know, very, very talented people end up there. But if I throw a dart at the procurement team or the HR team,

Even at a great company like Airbnb, I'm somewhat skeptical that I'm going to get someone who's really talented there. I'm sure there is somebody talented there somewhere, but I'm skeptical that they're getting like the most talented people. Like my guess is the most talented people go into product at Airbnb or they go into design or they go into engineering or something.

Rujul (09:04.74) hear what you're saying, but I would just say, think it's just different, like they're just different skill sets and they're different types of people that do different types of, you know, work in different functions in different roles, right? And so you can, it just, hard to compare like a great HR person with a great engineer, you know, like they're just going to be, but

Auren Hoffman (09:20.536) Well, I mean, I guess like for any great employee, you want someone who's like, who is proactive, who works hard, who's smart, who has agency. I mean, I would guess like those types of people go into product at a company like Airbnb, like they're just, they're just super talented people and they kind of go into that and they're not going into like the, these kind of like side functions, but I could be totally wrong. I just haven't met that many people there. So

Rujul (09:46.511) No, totally. Well, what I would say is, you know, there's a lot of like, I've had the pleasure of meeting some really great procurement people over the last five years that since we started zip and you realize that like there it's less the case in the US, but in Europe, there are universities that like, you know, I can, I can get my degree in procurement in supply chain. That's less of a thing here in the States. But it's, different, right? In other parts of the world. And if you think about like, you know, the procurement function at like, I don't know.

Auren Hoffman (10:07.981) Yeah, interesting.

Rujul (10:16.423) even if you pick Airbus or something, what those functions deliver literally moves the EBITDA number for these large organizations and that is how they're valued. there is a very real, it's a different skill, it's totally different than growth and R &D, but ultimately a lot, most of the enterprises actually, they're kind of valued on their profitability and procurement is a very, very core function to that.

Auren Hoffman (10:19.436) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (10:36.28) Yep.

Rujul (10:45.071) It just, I hear you because like I've literally worked at Airbnb and like, know, we focus so much on growth that we kind of like don't think so much about EBITDA in bottom line. But for most companies in the world, it actually matters a ton. And it's very, very critical. And people actually study this stuff, you know, other parts of the world.

Auren Hoffman (11:03.5) Now as, as companies get more visibility and control over their spending, like who, who are going to be like the winners and losers? Like if I'm going to invest, if I get, if I assume that this is going to happen, like how would, how would you like allocate your dollars as a investor to winners and losers there?

Rujul (11:23.963) that's a good question. mean, I think the winners are, well, I think the winners are certainly the leadership of the company, right? Because they earlier visibility into the spend. I also think the winners actually are like the employee base, right? Because I think there's totally a world where procurement can drive business velocity. And if it's an easier experience to follow, I actually get the thing I need faster in order to do my job better.

Auren Hoffman (11:53.381) Yeah.

Rujul (11:53.863) And so there's like a real element to that. I think the losers are, you know, like maybe some software that's been around since the 80s. Maybe it's kind of that flavor. And it's probably like, I mean, there is some semblance of more control, right? And so like completely moving fast and breaking things and not falling process. I think if you're trying to do that, I think maybe then you come out a loser in that.

But I don't know. I try not to think of the world as...

Auren Hoffman (12:26.36) Yeah. I mean, you couldn't, you, I, my guess is a lot of like, my guess is a lot of companies have like more Microsoft office licenses than they have employees or something like that. Like there's probably like those types of things where like some, company like Microsoft is going to get caught or those, or, or they have a lot of Salesforce licenses, but they're just not using them in the right way. they could, those types of things.

Rujul (12:52.359) Absolutely, absolutely. I do think that there's less waste and so the companies that are benefiting from the waste end up sort of losing out. But I think that's actually better for the world and it's valuable. The other thing I'd say too is, also think that this has become, procurement has become more front and center, certainly in the last couple of years with the macro sort of environment. But also if you look at the last 100 years, I'll give you an example, but when Ford,

Auren Hoffman (13:03.008) Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Rujul (13:20.719) I don't know if I actually learned this not too long ago, but when Ford was really growing, I can't remember which decade, but sometime in like the early to mid 1900s, they had this whole initiative to try to fully verticalize. And so they like wanted everything to be built in Michigan. They would like train everything over. would like just, they were like trying to get fully vertically integrated from the steel involved in the cars to everything. And ultimately that ended up.

just failing miserably. It just totally did not work. And then you look at today, you look at a company like Tesla, for example, it's all supply chain and procurement. They're like, just every single thing is coming from a different supplier. They're pulling it together and that's how they drive cost savings and get the car to the consumer at the lowest rate. And so even how supply chains sort of evolve, you sort of see the direct procurement component sort of change and the value of procurement actually changes for organizations.

And so there's like a macro trend there too. And so think ultimately in all of that, you could argue that the consumer is actually the

Auren Hoffman (14:24.61) Now part of what you're been like working on is just essentially like a gentizing things, right? like if you just think of just general corporate workflows, like what workflows do think are going to be more likely to be a gentize and what do you think are going to take a longer time to be figured out?

Rujul (14:43.855) Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think that it's workflows that are sort of comprised of relatively repetitive, sort of predictable outcomes within the workflow, right? And procurement is a great example of that because if someone's buying software, they're going to go through certain types of legal reviews, IT reviews.

budget reviews, right? But like a budget review for any purchase is very similar to the budget, to a budget review for another purchase because it's like, what is it with cost center and does it.

Auren Hoffman (15:19.938) Yeah, who has to look at it? What documents have to be reviewed, you know, etc.

Rujul (15:25.755) it's very sort of like narrow, each review is like narrow in scope. And I think where LLMs are today, where sort of the capabilities exist today, I think you can actually handle narrowly scope tasks really well with an agent. And that was part of at Zip, we announced 50 plus pre-configured agents about five or six weeks ago that can be deployed into the procurement workflow. And so I think procurement is actually a great place to start, which I'm by the way personally excited about because I feel like a lot of

this type of innovation starts with the front of the house. It starts with revenue. starts with, I mean, there's so many, I can't drive on the one-on-one without seeing like AI, BDR, SDR, billboard ads, right? But people don't want to take much risk in accounting and in finance because you can't get the numbers wrong, so to speak. And so generally there's more sort of aversion.

Auren Hoffman (15:59.768) Yep.

Auren Hoffman (16:06.082) Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Rujul (16:19.527) to risk, but procurement is a great place to start because in the back of the house, I mean, because it's just there are so many reviews happening that can be fairly repetitive.

Auren Hoffman (16:32.366) Where do you think like, like we're using agents are today where they're not yet working, but like we can be pretty confident in one to two years they're going to work.

Rujul (16:43.675) Yeah, I can give you a couple of examples. I think it's in certain types of legal reviews because take a legal review, high stakes, but also high context. What types of risk are you willing to take? What does it mean to have a certain type of risk? And it's document-based. LLMs are actually quite good at flagging discrepancies within documents, sort of, hey, this is sort of non-standard to this company's internal policy.

Auren Hoffman (16:51.992) Yep.

Rujul (17:12.463) you know, around indemnity caps, but how risky is that or not? Like you need a human to do that. And I think over, you know, over even just the next three years, I think you'll see like agents become really good at that and humans more importantly, agents to take more action sort of in the legal, sort of, area. but I don't think we're there like today. I don't think.

Auren Hoffman (17:35.918) I think there's certain things we probably could get there really quick. Like, historically, like whenever I get an NDA, I sent it over to my, you know, sub lawyer at our company, Jericho, whoever that they, they look at it super quick and then they say, it's okay to sign, but that could be like, you know, a day later before I get that thumbs up and it takes a lot of time. It's probably hundreds of dollars. If you think of all of it, you know, that went into it. and that just seemed something where I could like point it to my.

Rujul (17:57.863) You can bet it.

Auren Hoffman (18:04.928) legal bot or something, and it could probably tell me, yeah, this is, you know, based on what you've told me in the past, this is, this is fine. You know, nothing really to push back on or something.

Rujul (18:15.003) No, you're totally right. It's a question of trust, which is really a question of stakes. And an NDA is low stakes because it's just an NDA. Yeah. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (18:19.564) Yep. Yep. Yeah. Good point. So low stakes. Yeah. Yeah. Every once in there's like a weird gotcha. So you just have to make sure. Okay. Just, it doesn't have like these six crazy gotchas in there or something.

Rujul (18:30.599) Exactly. But you're right, you start there. You don't start with the 49 page MSA.

Auren Hoffman (18:35.072) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, interesting. What, where else are you like, where we're not quite there, but you're pretty excited about?

Rujul (18:46.919) Well, what I'm actually really excited about I'll give you a couple examples of agents that we recently announced and launched that customers are using One we call the intake validation agent, which sounds like really not sexy But what it is is anytime someone puts in a request right? Hey, I want to buy this thing Typically, the first step is a triage step someone in procurement goes in they check

whoops, they selected the wrong category. It's actually this category. And by the way, that matters because it impacts how it hits the general ledger and the P &L later, right? Or, they said it's $100,000, but it's actually 100K per year for three years. So it's really 300K. We can update that, right? And so our intake validation agent is configured to all of the company's policies and it immediately detects all the discrepancies and the human can review it and say, yep, I agree, I agree, I agree. And it automatically updates.

Auren Hoffman (19:19.277) Yeah.

Rujul (19:40.333) workflow and like, know, humans are reviewing, you know, tens of thousands of requests a year for a given customer potentially. So can be really high throughput. But the thing that I, you know, I think will get better over time is we still need to do a decent amount of configuration, right? A lot of this is like prompt engineering. You got to get the prompts right. We've got to get the configuration right. Otherwise it doesn't yield good result for the customer that's actually using it. And I think the configuration elements will get easier over time because right now there's

there's still a decent amount of implementation configuration work that's required. You can't just expect the agent to produce good result. You really have to explain to it what you want. And maybe that changes and gets better.

Auren Hoffman (20:23.212) How are you using these tools internally for yourself to write software better or do sales better? Or how are you guys using maybe not the tools that you're developing, but tools that other companies have developed.

Rujul (20:35.771) Yeah, so we use a tremendous number of tools internally, you know, in engineering. Of course, we use cursor probably just like any other tech company. Yeah, we use some of the prototyping tools, which I've had the pleasure of playing around with like vZero and super cool and have really helped with our.

Auren Hoffman (20:43.214) Everyone does. Yep.

Auren Hoffman (20:52.578) Yep. Yeah, like full.new lovable like all those guys. Yeah, great tools.

Rujul (20:58.503) And yeah, I don't know how enduring some of these things are because I every like other week that I ask it's something new that we're using and I don't know if we are still using the old thing or we changed or you know, or what

Auren Hoffman (21:09.688) They're high velocity, high churn right now, right?

Rujul (21:14.247) We totally believe that. And then on, you know, in other functions, we're using a bunch of tools to, and you can imagine in BDR, we tried by the way, some of the like AI BDR things and those did not work for us. And maybe it's because we sell into the enterprise and we just require a certain level of quality.

Auren Hoffman (21:30.55) Yeah. I mean, you would think they should, but like, is it, so are you just working on things that like help you write more personal emails or respond to people quicker or sales engineering agents on the calls or I don't know. do you.

Rujul (21:47.983) No, that's right. It's like we basically realized that you can't have like an AI BDR with broad scope today, or at least not for our business. It didn't work for us. We had to turn the solutions that we tried there. But if you narrow the scope, okay, know, a salesperson like gets a summary or like they're like prospecting an account and they get all the information, they get a pre-written email that, you know, with what zip is and everything's ready to go for and make it easy. And then they can be like, this email is terrible. Let me change it.

and then I'll send it out, that type of sort of experiences seem to work well. And we use some pretty small startups and things that we use to test in sales. We're much more open to trying different things in sales. Or we've also built our own, like we have our own props and chat-t-pt that our team has. They all have access and they can sort of put that in and they're all in an environment and tweak it. So we're pretty liberal in go-to-market.

But just like the comment I was making, when it comes to anything to do with customers, anything to do with finance, accounting, or internals, we take much less risk there. And so there's definitely much, much, much less AI adoption in those areas.

Auren Hoffman (23:00.398) Are you changing how you interview people?

Rujul (23:04.475) You know, that's a good question. I don't think we have, but we probably should. I think we probably should. And in fact, the real question is actually what happened. It's like the question before the interview, which is, do you really need this role? And does the role change? Does the role change? So that's a great point.

Auren Hoffman (23:18.018) You realize it exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (23:25.932) Yeah. Cause I imagine for certain roles, whether it be engineering or marketing, et cetera, like just if they're not using these tools, it's probably a good sign that they're not the right person for your company or something.

Rujul (23:38.279) No, completely. I think there's an element of how much they're personally using AI and how technically forward they are. Not technical, but just they're with it more because there's such a rate of change. You want people that are going to adapt and they're going to evolve and they're going to change how they work and get better over the coming years.

Auren Hoffman (23:59.362) Now a couple of YC questions. Do you think the median YC startup today is better or worse than it was five or 10 years ago?

Rujul (24:09.073) So my first company was in the winter 2013 batch, 12 and a half years ago. And then Zip was in the summer 2020 batch. you know, was a seven year delta for me between the two batches. I would say that, you know, think it's better. And I think it's because YC has just also gotten better over the years. Because really, if you think about the sort of the ethos of YC, the advice that YC gives,

there's way more pattern recognition now in 2025 than there was in 2013. And it's simply because way more companies have gone through YC, way more founders have gone through YC. So you just like learn more, the partners learn more, the advice only sort of improves with time and there's only more pattern recognition. I also think there's better support systems post-YC.

today as well, right? Because I remember back in 2013, YCS, there's demo day, it's awesome. If things work out, you get funded. If not, it's more challenging. then after that, it's like, okay, now here's the desert and YC's over. So the hug that you got, you don't get the hug anymore and the world is tough. And I used to kind of joke, but it's kind of like you're showing the desert, you're giving a bottle of Poland Spring and you're wishing the best.

Auren Hoffman (25:13.058) Yeah.

Rujul (25:27.323) That's it. most of you don't make it kind of a thing. And today there's more support after from YC and from others in the community. so I think it's different. I feel like it's easier to do a startup today than it was. And I would credit a lot of that to YC.

Auren Hoffman (25:42.894) Do you think the median Harvard student today is better also than it was 10 years ago?

Rujul (25:51.239) Well, I dropped out, I don't know if I'm the right person to chime in there. I don't know. Well, so see, think there's also even with YC, there's a bit of a distinction in like, has YC improved? Absolutely. Has the average founder improved? Again, I think so because of the advice they receive, but there is a selection bias issue. I remember back in 2013, people that were doing startups, it was still early days.

Like it was getting to be cooler to be a founder, but it wasn't like that cool. You know what I mean? And like today it's like more cool, which actually kind of is not a great thing because it attracts people who are like trying to start something to be cool. And that's not why you should start something. Like you should start something because you want to build something that just.

Auren Hoffman (26:24.728) Yeah.

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (26:38.274) Yeah, or they want another resume or, whatever. It's like you join, you join McKinsey or something. Yeah.

Rujul (26:41.243) Right, and that's the worst thing. You cannot start a company to add something to your resume. That's like just the most, you know, I that really stings.

Auren Hoffman (26:51.79) What is a common piece of advice that white like a YC advice that you might disagree with?

Rujul (27:01.063) I mean, look, I went through YC twice. I worked at YC briefly as visiting partner. I could not agree more deeply with the advice that YC puts out there. So I really don't know. I really don't know. I'm just such a firm believer in YC and the advice that it puts out there. I have to really think.

Auren Hoffman (27:26.19) Okay. Cause part of it is like, you know, there's definitely like a go to market advice. That's pretty common. it's there's a, you know, there are certain things that are like, okay, we've already seen like 20 people try this company. So don't do this company type of thing, right? Which maybe is good advice.

Rujul (27:47.943) Yeah, and it's possible that maybe YC was wrong the 21st time, but do you want to be the founder that has to find out over the years? And I think YC's advice is also sort of Darwinian. It's like, look, here's the advice. We'll tell it to you straight. And if you want to ignore it, fine. It's your company. But it's just so rare to get feedback like that, because you talk to a

Auren Hoffman (27:52.269) Right.

Right, right, right. Exactly.

Auren Hoffman (28:04.749) Yeah.

Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Rujul (28:14.951) VC, they don't want to invest. Let's say they're not going to tell you your idea is bad. Why would they? They would just be like, they'd say something polite and then move on. But you are the one as the founder that ultimately pays that price. Not that you should listen to an investor. You should listen to your customer first and foremost. if you're really early, you're still trying to figure out what sticks. so there's just so much of the YC ethos that we try to live by it at Zip2. Another one is like,

You've got to be really clear about what you do. And it should be really simple to explain. And you realize that so many people use so many fluffy words and like you can't just understand what it actually is.

Auren Hoffman (28:49.932) Yes.

Auren Hoffman (28:55.01) You go to a website of most software companies and you have no idea what they do. Yeah.

Rujul (28:59.247) Exactly, so, know, at Zip, at least, and I personally try to live by more of that.

Auren Hoffman (29:07.278) Back to recruiting, are there any like philosophies you have that are a little bit against the grain or are you looking for either on how you recruit or the types of people you recruit?

Rujul (29:18.853) I think we really value, again, I don't know how against the grain this is or isn't, but I personally really value scrappiness.

Auren Hoffman (29:28.13) How do you see that in the recruiting thing?

Rujul (29:31.751) Yeah, yeah. So it's about like hearing the other person's story, right? And then like double clicking and like really it's all in the follow up and the follow up to the follow up kind of question of like how they actually do something.

Auren Hoffman (29:43.094) And that's like a story of what they did in eighth grade. I mean, are you going into their life or something or?

Rujul (29:49.583) No, no, just in their most recent job or their current job. you know, by the way, like I also just asked, like, what's the, what's the scrappiest thing you've done in the last 12 years, 12 months professionally? And, it's interesting. Yeah. If you just flat out ask. And sometimes, you know, you get great answers and sometimes you get something that's like, I don't know. Like, is that really scrappy? And you know, you're putting the person on spot. You can ask a follow up question. can really push, but, you, kind of like understand how they think and like how they like.

Auren Hoffman (29:51.595) Okay.

Auren Hoffman (29:57.048) Okay.

Yeah. So hard. That's a hard question to answer.

Rujul (30:19.416) do work because as dumb as it sounds it's really important to hire people who can actually do work.

Auren Hoffman (30:24.994) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How else can you determine if they can actually do work before you hire them?

Rujul (30:33.411) So I think it's tough. The thing that I feel like I've found to be the most valuable is honestly doing enough back-channeling and reference checking. And you know, I'd strongly recommend, of course, doing like a working session with a person, getting into a complicated prompt and having them dedicate some hours and you kind of go through it together live. So that definitely helps. But I wouldn't say like, it doesn't give you perfect signal, I don't think. Like there's definitely false positives that you get.

or rather false negative. know, back channeling.

Auren Hoffman (31:07.118) A of personal questions. What is the conspiracy theory that you believe?

Rujul (31:13.319) Oh, I don't know if there's a conspiracy theory that I believe. I mean, there's I don't know if I believe any of this stuff or not, but there's certainly a lot of, you know, conspiracy theories that float around about how COVID got started and whether it's, you know, truly an organic thing that happened or not quite so much, you know, Wuhan or whatever. And again, I don't necessarily believe one way or another, nor do I really care that much. but, you know, I'm not convinced one way or another just yet. So maybe I'll bring that

Auren Hoffman (31:27.0) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (31:42.446) All right. That's good. All right. Last question. We ask all of our guests, what conventional wisdom or advice do you think is generally bad advice?

Rujul (31:51.207) So I think Paul Graham, PG actually wrote an essay on how all traditional management advice is actually wrong for founders. I have plenty. The classic, right? Like you're a manager. Like what's that book? It's like the one minute manager. It's a literally like a 20 page like, well, it takes like five minutes to read it or 10 minutes maybe something like.

Auren Hoffman (32:03.662) What's some examples there? Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (32:14.498) I've heard of it, but I've never read it. Yeah.

Okay, okay, maybe I should read it then, yeah.

Rujul (32:21.283) It's not really with reading, it's like, you know, it talks about this manager who like starts in one job, he gets promoted, promoted, and then it kind of ends with something like, and I read this years ago, so I could be misremembering, but it kind of ends with like, and then the manager is like looking out the window, sort of like doing nothing because he has delegated his work and his teams are doing it and he has like, he has become a manager or something like that. And, and, you know, you think why would somebody

Auren Hoffman (32:23.181) Okay.

Auren Hoffman (32:46.104) Uh-huh.

Rujul (32:49.295) Like, why would that be good advice? And I think the point that PG made was that, you know, management advice is written for companies that were not, with CEOs who are not founders, with hired CEOs, right? Like you're hired to be the CEO of like a company that makes blenders. And now you get moved, now you run a company that makes like toaster ovens. Like you don't know anything about the product. You probably, it's like a management thing. You probably run the company the same way. You maybe don't care that much about the product and where the company is headed.

Auren Hoffman (33:03.96) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (33:13.133) Yeah.

Rujul (33:17.159) And so you run the company in a certain way, but you don't do that as a founder. And I think, you know, in 20 or 30 years, and this is the point he was making, you'll have like management advice might be like the opposite because you'll have more big companies that are founder CEO sort of led companies. And the advice, the prevailing advice will be like literally the complete opposite of the advice from, you know,

Auren Hoffman (33:40.75) Even, even when they're not founder CEOs, would ideally the CEO should have like a deep interest in the products and be creating the products. And you know, the, if you're the CEO of Walmart today, like you're probably like, like really going to the stores and try to understand like how the stores are going. you're the CEO of Starbucks, you're probably like tasting the coffee and seeing, you know,

If you're the CEO of Microsoft, you hopefully you're like a software developer. You understand what's going on. Like my guess is that even those types of CS are not like the older school CS, but I don't know. Actually. I don't. Yeah.

Rujul (34:19.611) I don't know either. And I think maybe it has gotten better. Maybe it has changed. But I think a lot of the management advice out there think lacks two or three decades probably, right? Because it gets into books. It takes decades to of cycle through a change.

Auren Hoffman (34:26.616) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (34:32.576) It is interesting how like, you know, there was a time where so many engineering managers weren't really in the code. and many of the managers turned out to be not the best software developers. They were just kind of like, they were good at people or they're good at advocating for their teams or, other types of other good at dealing. and it does seem like there's been a shift there where even at bigger companies.

Rujul (34:39.601) No.

Rujul (34:54.289) Big surprise.

Auren Hoffman (34:59.746) Like those, they're just like much more in the code now.

Rujul (35:03.387) Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. And I think that's totally net positive for the world. And so I do think that sort of the prevailing advice would change here pretty significantly, but I think it'll be like a total night and day from conventional wisdom and sort of advice around management.

Auren Hoffman (35:19.648) What you're talking about is kind of this like founder mode meme in a way, right? Like you got to get into details more. Yeah.

Rujul (35:24.08) It is founder mode. Yeah. And it's, it's, that's why I think it's founder mode and not CEO mode.

Auren Hoffman (35:30.966) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You have to care deeply about it. that's out there. All right. This has been amazing. Thank you so much for joining us. The World of DaaS. I follow you on LinkedIn. You're you're not on X by the way, you're like, you know, you're, sorry.

Rujul (35:43.311) not. yeah, no I'm not. I'm not very much on X, but I am on LinkedIn.

Auren Hoffman (35:48.312) But I definitely, follow you on Linkedin. definitely encourage our listeners to engage you there. This has been a ton of fun.

Rujul (35:54.951) No, thanks so much for having me on.

Auren Hoffman (35:58.018) Amazing. All right.